Guardians are not that difficult to acquire. If anything needs help its the Domina.

Domina needs help as well, to make advent more viable late game.  Reducing the cost of guardians would allow advent better keep pace fleeting and help their tier zero spam have more resilience when the mid game comes around.  This would also help them be able to take out a vasari starbase without unacceptable losses earlier and without bombers.

advent need more then a small change to one ship to be effective.  The advent have plenty of things that cost far more then their effectiveness and aren't very effective because they cost a lot. 

Yes, that is true, but i'm not talking about difficulty to acquire.  Heavy cruisers are "difficult to acquire" but that doesn't stop KoK from building up 5 labs on his homeworld every game and building them.

What i'm talking about is military value to cost, and in that guardians are very expensive units.  They are difficult to value on paper, since they have piss poor attack and are almost completely defensive in nature.  Also, they already have so many balancing negatives: they are slow, they suck up their antimatter quickly, they are built with auto attack on when they shouldn't have it on at all, their best ability is tech 5, their primary ability is only mediocre and therefore makes them irrelevant for much use in multiplayer.  They are countered by the vasari by building kanraks, and the TEC with an akkan, both of which are very easy to come by for both races.

Guardians are more expensive then heavy cruisers and yet they are the first fleet support unit advent can acquire.  Their starting ability sucks up antimatter and doesn't even last the full duration.  They require a lot of micromanagement and you have to frequently switch between stacking your fleet and unstacking it constantly to be even able to use guardians effectively and fight with your fleet.

The Advent were the most powerful military faction in the game for quite a while, largely because of the support provided by Guardians. The only reason that changed was because of the Illum nerf and the increase of the number of Vasari players, and thus phase missiles. Many things are holding the Advent back, but the guardians are not one of them.

If the battleball was a mobile tactic what weakness would the thing have? True the autocasting could use a bit of work (as with almost everything), but at least with small numbers of guardians shield projection works quite well. If you chose to use larger numbers well obviously its going to require more micro.

IDK if Vas are weak in the early game... sure the Skirantra is nerfed but the Kanraks still come out the door at T1.

No debate here however that TEC completely owns everybody early on tho.

Agreed and certified.

The guardian is already very cost-effective; its primary issues are that:

A. It requires either a Progenitor or Repulsion research to be effective.

B. It has a lengthy list of prerequisites that make it expensive to access.

C. It's not really that effective for small fleets, and is better suited to larger fleets with at least 60 frigates.

All of these conspire to make fast guardians a foolish approach, even with a cost reduction.  If you want to improve Advent's early-game prospects, this is not the unit to be looking at.  I've long argued that the 1.18 scout damage nerf needs to be reverted and the Seeker should take a durability nerf in its place.  The Arcova and Navigator were about right in 1.18, and the Seeker was only overpowered for its excessive durability, something that never has been addressed.

Depends on your range.  At super-close range, this works lovely.  At mid-ranges that are typical in 1v1's you're in for pain.  TEC will have time to diversify and make T0 spam a horrible approach.

The Vasari support cruisers are even higher tier than the Guardian, only the Hoshiko is easier to deploy. The whole point of Darvin's post is that the Guardian is not supposed to be an early game unit, which is pretty much what everyone else has said. If you want to help the Advent early game, it will be far more effective to buff their capitalships or scouts so they can better deal with LRF spams.

So your response is to attack a well respected member of the community simply for agreeing with something you already admitted to yourself? 

Just throwing this out there but if the Iconus is supposed to be more of a late-game unit, what would happen if the Iconus and Domina were flipped in the tech tree.  This way by the time you need to research it, you've probably researched the necessary shield techs anyway.

If you could shut down enemy fleets early on with the cheaper Dominas and get the healing ability earlier (4 or 5 labs?), would that make it more viable without fixing?

120 crystal does seem a bit steep for T3 but Advent is thirsty for crystal in general.  They should probably have gotten the Crystal tech at T1 but that's a different thread.

Well, think of it this way. You could be completely right that guardians are bad for the cost. But if you are the only one who holds that belief, what good does that do you? Like it or not, your whole point of this post is to persuade us. And in that case opinions and popularity contests do matter, because your ultimate goal is to persuade the devs to do something about this issue. And your chances of doing that are a heck of a lot better if you can get community agreement on it.

Second, since you are clearly a person of reason, surely you understand the value of scientific skepticism. At this point we have mostly been debating with generalizations, and even then you have not responded to all your criticisms. That you are losing the "popularity contests" is probably because you have not provided sufficient evidence to allow us to overcome our skepticism, not because there is a forum conspiracy to disprove you. You are the one attempting to change the status quo, thus you bear the responsibility for providing evidence. With scramble bombers people made charts showing just how few resources it took to get a swarm of say 39 bombers out. The guys who proved there was a engine damage bug with the illuminator ran probably dozens of tests comparing the expected results with the actual.

Oh I'll do an analysis of all of your and darvins postings just for the hell of it at a later date, and see for myself if I can root out the same person.  Its quite easy to make another account, people do such things all the time.  I know with great experience the lengths people will go to attack you.  Its not a conspiracy, as there is no organization truly.  Its just a bunch of forum accounts that are buddy buddy with each other over years of patting each other on the back.  So naturally someone comes along and says something different, and you all attack because you have your own relationship based agendas.  Its great for survival in the wild, especially when hunting mastodons, but this online team has no real basis and is easily shattered by reason.  So in essence, people being people. 

Also, you seem like a person who would enjoy a good forum conspiracy to spice things up.  Conspiracies occur whenever there is competition since bending the rules usually nets to ones advantage, and in this case the competition is for developer attention.  The attention grabber I have is in the title, and whether they want to read this at all is up to them, long walls of text are tough to read when you aren't looking to delve into a thread. The developers respond to easy things like DPS of a illuminator, but really that is small fry to the aspect of the entire advent fleet issue.

As for saying "its only one man with one opinion", well It only takes one man to change how people think about things, which then in turn changes the governments, religions, and all other ideologies in the world. 

One of my favorite quotes, and a great plan of operation, is:
"first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win!".

But first, you have to have the balls to be that one guy.

The beautiful thing about scientific skepticism is that you can get paid to not do all that much of anything.  You can be skeptical about a great many things, and it may help you.  But then science is a self admittedly limited entity that has several severe limitations.  So, by limiting yourself to scientific skepticism you hole yourself up in a box and feel impregnable, but the reality is that this conversation lies beyond that box.  The sort of balance that makes sins such a great game to play is because developers had the balls to say "to hell with the number crunching bitches" and implement such "OP" abilities as repulse, and Lvl 6 marza lovin and mobile mine deployment and subverter lockdowns.  That the number crunchers can perform tests on their dps and mitigation and completely miss the mark on the strategic assets of the game.  The numbers are but a small part of the whole, and I am talking about the whole picture, whereas you are talking about a part of the picture.

I refuse to truncate this discussion, I instead want you to match me with good sound reasoning as to WHY the guardian shouldn't get a look and take a stand and contribute something of your own, maybe a possible OTHER solution that perhaps I haven't thought of.  Instead I see forum games.

It would be amazing to have a contributive post!

Also, darvin, pretty much you stated things that are true about the game currently and didn't add much in the way of actual discussion pertaining to the thread topic.  What you said is true and I agree, but please stay on topic.

This looks like Goafan is the bad cop, while darvin is the good cop.  I'll analyze this further as well.  Its an easy gig to write after all.

I think this has gone a little off-topic...

I think the best course of action is the one being discussed in another thread about a fix to the Domina and the Revelation's Guidance. The Advent have always been designed as a late game race and currently perform that duty in a slightly sub-par fashion (but only due to the lack of reliable mobile healing and a weakness the Phase missiles) against mature Vasari or TEC players who have held control of the field for the entire game. A working Domina and a fixed Guidance on the Revelation helps with both of those.  

Advent were never designed to be an early game race. I think that is pretty plain. They won't ever compare to TEC in the first 30 mins so why focus on that? The Devs will never go outside what they planned for their factions anyway. As long as Advent can shine when the tipping point is reached then there is no need to go further than that. And certainly no reason to start an argument on a forum where generally only logic and reason preside (in most circumstances ). 

Yeah..  For a while now I've been pondering the idea of putting PM resistance on Shield Projection as a way to keep the Advent from getting quite as slaughtered by them.

But Sareth, you are seeming, idk..  Paranoid about all this?  Seriously, stop victimizing yourself here.  The fact is, Darvin and Goa are both really respected people here because they treat people with respect.  When they disregard the idea that lessening the cost of Guardians will help, it's probably because at some point along the line they too thought of the idea or heard about it.  If not, you have to understand that the Advent have absolutely no trouble late-game and the Guardian isn't an early-game unit.  Therefore, causing it to be cheaper won't help anything.

Now, if you want to fix broken stuff about the Advent, come help with the Domina and Revelation fixes I'm working on as mentioned by Rowanlad or start working on Resource Focus yourself to come up with a decent mechanism for it.  Or try buffing the damage of Advent caps to deal with LRF spam.  Or try buffing scouts, or what have you.  Pick something that will actually help the Advent.  So far as I can tell, these are the problems with the Advent now:

• weak early-game
• sucky economy
• no mobile healing (Dominas suck)
• PM weakness

Now, weakness early on isn't so much a problem if you can survive it.  A better economy early on would be best and I'd say the best way to pull that one off would be through researchables.  Later on, I'd vote for nerfing Resource Focus and making it passive if data showed that it helped enough.

I think having some level of PM Block with the Projected Shield makes total sense, if Vasari are supposed to have the most advanced shields. I would suggest a level 6 re-searchable with 3 levels that adds 5-10-15% PM Block to Shield Projection ability. I don't think it should have more than that because only the Kol has more PM Block and it makes sense that a Cap Ship ability should be stronger than a support Cruiser especially when it is being applied fleet wide. Its enough to be useful and increase survivability vs Vasari late game drastically without being way OP IMHO. PM would still be highly effective but Advent would become a viable playable race vs Vasari once again.

Conversely, I would say that you could make the case for a level 8 re-searchable that would grant all shields some level of PM Blocking for Advent but with lower percentages than the Shield Projection, say 4-6-8% PM Block.

There we go, good responses!  Adding PM blocking to the guardian's shield projection would make guardians additionally useful in the early game against a vasari cap ship snipe fleet, as well as provide more use for them in the late game due to increased capability against a phase missile unit spam.  TEC players rejoice knowing that the advent wouldn't be getting buffed vs their tactics.

Reducing the unit cost a small amount would still allow them to come into play faster(my data is based upon COMMON SENSE and long term experience! OMG!).  As for numbers, its immaterial to some degree, because the quality of the game is based upon the quality of the HUMAN (not numerical) experience.  Last time I checked I wasn't a number.

Oh and Kitkun, i'm not using another account in this converstation, you have my word.  I don't waste my time with little bullshit like that.

Tedious response to Goafan, target audience need not read unless you feel you will get enjoyment out of it:

Also to be fair goafan, you chose to oppose me immediately on this thread, in essence to say that the thread is irrelevant, that the domina needs a buff(its a horse that has almost been beaten to death on these forums, its a no brainer that it needs an improvement) and implying with your unconditional manner that's all the advent need.  I can say that when someone is so casually rude to another person I wouldn't expect to be able to persuade them of anything, since their mind is already locked into a competitive struggle. You have actively been trying to shut this conversation down, and wow, I won't let you.

I'm enforcing a breeding ground of ideas as to "what if guardian buff" to assist developers.  More heads are better, and there is a lot of sins experience in the community. Free discussion is a great thing, and not surprisingly there is usually someone out there to oppose a discussion for whatever personal reason.  Also, Goafan I don't do any work without pay(LOL at the illuminator bug guy), so if you want to pay me to provide the data you so desire, lets make a contract.  I don't come cheaply either.